Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Long wait times are common in the US. I just saw a new PCP yesterday, but had to make the appointment about 2 months ago. I took the first available since I never know when the insurance I buy through the ACA may magically disappear into another tax cut for the uber wealthy.
 
^no system is perfect but our current one isn’t working so great.
 
CraigB;n3551967 said:
Long wait times are common in the US. I just saw a new PCP yesterday, but had to make the appointment about 2 months ago. I took the first available since I never know when the insurance I buy through the ACA may magically disappear into another tax cut for the uber wealthy.
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Wait times are like traffic, can't get away from either. US has a better availability of healthcare (I'm including diagnostics, procedures, etc.. in this) than other countries but we have the problem of straight up pricing people out of it. Other countries have opposite problem where everyone is technically able to get healthcare but demand outstrips supply to the point where for many by the time they can get care it might be too late.

I think we need a better mix of private vs public, expand medicaid/care coverage to the in-betweeners who make too much money to qualify now and too little to afford insurance. Also stop the whole discounting bullshit, which ends up inflating prices way beyond what is reasonable, but also can't regulate it so much that it becomes unprofitable to run diagnostic centers, hospitals, etc... Another big thing would be ability to have coverage when changing jobs.
 
The ACA did a great job of making coverage affordable for me and the wife, but does not cover my son for some odd reason. This means we try to go through the state for coverage, but it's such a tangle web to try and navigate that it's nearly impossible to get him coverage.

I have no problem with private care or private insurance, but that should be above and beyond healthcare for everyone.
 
Net Neutrality is still hanging around. Now Ajit Pai blames the Obama Administration for the "misinformation" that they spread about a DDOS attack on the servers taking comments on the matter.


Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai yesterday acknowledged that the FCC lied about its public comment system being taken down by a DDoS attack during the net neutrality repeal proceeding.

Pai blamed the spreading of false information on employees hired by the Obama administration, and said that he isn't to blame because he "inherited... a culture" from "the prior Administration" that led to the spreading of false information. Pai wrote:
I am deeply disappointed that the FCC's former Chief Information Officer [David Bray], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I'm also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn't feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office."​
Pai's admission came in a statement yesterday. "It has become clear that in addition to a flawed comment system, we inherited from the prior Administration a culture in which many members of the Commission's career IT staff were hesitant to express disagreement with the Commission's former CIO in front of FCC management," he also said.
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:wall:
 
Hacking the USA's election is literally child's play.

An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said.

Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states.
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said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there.

Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour.

“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour on Sunday. “These things should not be easy enough for an 8-year-old kid to hack within 30 minutes, it’s negligent for us as a society.”
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Anyone watch any of the Senate Confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh?

[video=youtube;0DIGr3v-YWA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DIGr3v-YWA[/video]

[h=1][/h]
 
This is just a snippet of the article.

Not everybody reads the legal notices inside the Ottumwa Courier. But in January, Iowa pharmacist Mark Frahm noticed something unusual in the paper.

For years, Frahm’s South Side Drug bought pills from distributors, and dispensed prescriptions to the Wapello County jail. In turn, the pharmacy got reimbursed for the drugs by CVS Health Corp., which managed the county’s drug benefits plan.

As he compared the newspaper notice with his own records, and then with the county’s, Frahm saw that for a bottle of generic antipsychotic pills, CVS had billed Wapello County $198.22. But South Side Drug was reimbursed just $5.73.

So why was CVS charging almost $200 for a bottle of pills that it told the pharmacy was worth less than $6? And what was the company doing with the other $192.49?

Frahm had stumbled across what’s known as spread pricing, where companies like CVS mark up—sometimes dramatically—the difference between the amount they reimburse pharmacies for a drug and the amount they charge their clients.

It’s where pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) like CVS make a part of their profit. But Frahm says he didn’t think the spread could be thousands of percent.

“Middlemen have to make some money, but we didn’t expect it to be this extreme,” said Frahm, who said his pharmacy lost money in the jail account last year because CVS paid so little. “We figured everyone was playing fair.”
Click to expand...


Spread pricing “is not a secret to our clients,” Richard Ponesse, a senior director at CVS, told Iowa state lawmakers at a hearing in April. Many choose it because it’s “more predictable” than being exposed to pharmacy rates for drugs.

“Ultimately, under this model, we make money on some drugs and lose money on others,” CVS spokeswoman Christine Cramer said in response to questions about the practice.

To probe what middlemen make, Bloomberg examined the prices of 90 of the best-selling generic drugs used by Medicaid managed-care plans. In 2016, the drugs made up a large portion of Medicaid’s spending on generics.

Markups on these commonly prescribed generic drugs are growing, with huge markups on some well-known medicines, Bloomberg found. For the 90 drugs analyzed, which includes more than 500 dosages and formulations, PBMs and pharmacies siphoned off $1.3 billion of the $4.2 billion Medicaid insurers spent on the drugs in 2017.

While pricing data for benefit managers and their corporate clients, as well as some governments, is hidden, state Medicaid programs regularly publish comprehensive spending and price data that provide a window into how much middlemen and pharmacies make on markups.

The biggest markups tended to come on newer generic drugs. In 2017, markups in some states increased the price paid by state Medicaid plans for generic versions of the Novartis AG’s leukemia pill Gleevec by as much as $3,000 per prescription.
Click to expand...
 
This is just a snippet of the article.

Not everybody reads the legal notices inside the Ottumwa Courier. But in January, Iowa pharmacist Mark Frahm noticed something unusual in the paper.

For years, Frahm’s South Side Drug bought pills from distributors, and dispensed prescriptions to the Wapello County jail. In turn, the pharmacy got reimbursed for the drugs by CVS Health Corp., which managed the county’s drug benefits plan.

As he compared the newspaper notice with his own records, and then with the county’s, Frahm saw that for a bottle of generic antipsychotic pills, CVS had billed Wapello County $198.22. But South Side Drug was reimbursed just $5.73.

So why was CVS charging almost $200 for a bottle of pills that it told the pharmacy was worth less than $6? And what was the company doing with the other $192.49?

Frahm had stumbled across what’s known as spread pricing, where companies like CVS mark up—sometimes dramatically—the difference between the amount they reimburse pharmacies for a drug and the amount they charge their clients.

It’s where pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) like CVS make a part of their profit. But Frahm says he didn’t think the spread could be thousands of percent.

“Middlemen have to make some money, but we didn’t expect it to be this extreme,” said Frahm, who said his pharmacy lost money in the jail account last year because CVS paid so little. “We figured everyone was playing fair.”
Click to expand...


Spread pricing “is not a secret to our clients,” Richard Ponesse, a senior director at CVS, told Iowa state lawmakers at a hearing in April. Many choose it because it’s “more predictable” than being exposed to pharmacy rates for drugs.

“Ultimately, under this model, we make money on some drugs and lose money on others,” CVS spokeswoman Christine Cramer said in response to questions about the practice.

To probe what middlemen make, Bloomberg examined the prices of 90 of the best-selling generic drugs used by Medicaid managed-care plans. In 2016, the drugs made up a large portion of Medicaid’s spending on generics.

Markups on these commonly prescribed generic drugs are growing, with huge markups on some well-known medicines, Bloomberg found. For the 90 drugs analyzed, which includes more than 500 dosages and formulations, PBMs and pharmacies siphoned off $1.3 billion of the $4.2 billion Medicaid insurers spent on the drugs in 2017.

While pricing data for benefit managers and their corporate clients, as well as some governments, is hidden, state Medicaid programs regularly publish comprehensive spending and price data that provide a window into how much middlemen and pharmacies make on markups.

The biggest markups tended to come on newer generic drugs. In 2017, markups in some states increased the price paid by state Medicaid plans for generic versions of the Novartis AG’s leukemia pill Gleevec by as much as $3,000 per prescription.
Click to expand...
 
Michael Moore joins Chris Hayes in Flint, Michigan

Shocking that Flint is still such a mess.

I know its three years ago, but there was reminder on the show above, about the insane time that the US Army and the City didn't warn people about Army urban combat training exercises at night!


 
GRtak;n3553040 said:
Anyone watch any of the Senate Confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh?
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Kavanaugh will be lucky to still be a judge after these hearings. They have him on the hacked emails alone.
 
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It's great that for some things Politicians can still do stuff "across the isle" and get behind a good cause together - it's sad people still have to fight for it to happen and that it doesn't happen automatically.

 
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I gave you guys a funny thread and the leftists go and ruin it because they can't take a joke. Ugh.

Anyways, posting in here about Kavanaugh instead:

Anyone who blindly believes that Kavanaugh did or didn't do what he's accused of is an ignorant biased pawn. The fact is that it doesn't make any difference who believes who - that's mob mentality and that's how we got witches burning at the stake. What matters are the FACTS. Ford could very well be telling the truth but as it stands there is NO even remotely conclusive evidence of any criminal activity by Kavanaugh.

The accusation is that a high-school boy tried to get into a high-school girl's pants at a party. The girl has no idea when or where said party took place. The one witness that she herself named denied that this ever happened. Even if it happened exactly as she describes, there was no rape and no physical harm done. The statue of limitations has LONG passed. The FBI has NOTHING to do with this because it is not a federal crime - it is a local incident. If you're really curious, the FBI has investigated Kavanaugh six times already and found nothing. Furthermore, there is nothing to even investigate - it's a he-said she-said about... well, not a crime. It's all a crock of shit and the scumbag democrats are just doing this to derail the hearings - Feinstein is the biggest piece of garbage in this whole story.

You're entitled to the presumption of innocence in this country. I have no idea if Ford is telling the truth but there's ZERO evidence to back up her allegations so we cannot lynch Kavanaugh over this.
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Yes, blame the "Leftists" for everything.

The FBI does have something to do with this, they are the department that is required to do thorough investigations for the Senate, and the White House. This should have been brought forth in July, or early August to get things rolling(I blame Fienstein) . There should still be an investigation, and there is still time. There is only one reason not to do an investigation.

Also, where is Kavanaugh's friend that was in the room? Why isn't he testifying? He would be a great counter to Ford if this did not happen.

What about the other accusations?

This is not a criminal proceeding, so he will not be "lynched", he will not get the job he wants.

Do you believe that boofing is passing gas? (It is in Kavanaugh's year book, along with his conquest list. Also a bit telling on it's own)


I also find it quite telling about his(Kavanaugh) shift in tacits. I understand this process is a bit frustrating, but he knew there would be more scrutiny than anything else he has ever gone through. But he exploded in a way that I think should also disqualify him for the job.

He has also made more than a few accusations in that tirade that are ridiculous. How did the Clintons get dragged into this? Where is all the money that is funding the fight against him? Who is profiting from keeping this guy off the court? This is a bizarre way of defending yourself, and works to make him look a little unbalanced in my opinion.


This still ignores the fact that so many of the opinions he wrote during the Bush jr administration were kept under wraps. Why hide those, they are pertinent to the job he is attempting to get. If he is worthy of the job, it is up to him to show it. He has not in my opinion.
 
Yes, blame the "Leftists" for everything.

The FBI does have something to do with this, they are the department that is required to do thorough investigations for the Senate, and the White House. This should have been brought forth in July, or early August to get things rolling(I blame Fienstein) . There should still be an investigation, and there is still time. There is only one reason not to do an investigation.

Also, where is Kavanaugh's friend that was in the room? Why isn't he testifying? He would be a great counter to Ford if this did not happen.

What about the other accusations?

This is not a criminal proceeding, so he will not be "lynched", he will not get the job he wants.

Do you believe that boofing is passing gas? (It is in Kavanaugh's year book, along with his conquest list. Also a bit telling on it's own)


I also find it quite telling about his(Kavanaugh) shift in tacits. I understand this process is a bit frustrating, but he knew there would be more scrutiny than anything else he has ever gone through. But he exploded in a way that I think should also disqualify him for the job.

He has also made more than a few accusations in that tirade that are ridiculous. How did the Clintons get dragged into this? Where is all the money that is funding the fight against him? Who is profiting from keeping this guy off the court? This is a bizarre way of defending yourself, and works to make him look a little unbalanced in my opinion.


This still ignores the fact that so many of the opinions he wrote during the Bush jr administration were kept under wraps. Why hide those, they are pertinent to the job he is attempting to get. If he is worthy of the job, it is up to him to show it. He has not in my opinion.
 
Yes, blame the "Leftists" for everything.

The FBI does have something to do with this, they are the department that is required to do thorough investigations for the Senate, and the White House. This should have been brought forth in July, or early August to get things rolling(I blame Fienstein) . There should still be an investigation, and there is still time. There is only one reason not to do an investigation.

Also, where is Kavanaugh's friend that was in the room? Why isn't he testifying? He would be a great counter to Ford if this did not happen.

What about the other accusations?

This is not a criminal proceeding, so he will not be "lynched", he will not get the job he wants.

Do you believe that boofing is passing gas? (It is in Kavanaugh's year book, along with his conquest list. Also a bit telling on it's own)


I also find it quite telling about his(Kavanaugh) shift in tacits. I understand this process is a bit frustrating, but he knew there would be more scrutiny than anything else he has ever gone through. But he exploded in a way that I think should also disqualify him for the job.

He has also made more than a few accusations in that tirade that are ridiculous. How did the Clintons get dragged into this? Where is all the money that is funding the fight against him? Who is profiting from keeping this guy off the court? This is a bizarre way of defending yourself, and works to make him look a little unbalanced in my opinion.


This still ignores the fact that so many of the opinions he wrote during the Bush jr administration were kept under wraps. Why hide those, they are pertinent to the job he is attempting to get. If he is worthy of the job, it is up to him to show it. He has not in my opinion.
 
Yes, blame the "Leftists" for everything.

The FBI does have something to do with this, they are the department that is required to do thorough investigations for the Senate, and the White House. This should have been brought forth in July, or early August to get things rolling(I blame Fienstein) . There should still be an investigation, and there is still time. There is only one reason not to do an investigation.

Also, where is Kavanaugh's friend that was in the room? Why isn't he testifying? He would be a great counter to Ford if this did not happen.

What about the other accusations?

This is not a criminal proceeding, so he will not be "lynched", he will not get the job he wants.

Do you believe that boofing is passing gas? (It is in Kavanaugh's year book, along with his conquest list. Also a bit telling on it's own)


I also find it quite telling about his(Kavanaugh) shift in tacits. I understand this process is a bit frustrating, but he knew there would be more scrutiny than anything else he has ever gone through. But he exploded in a way that I think should also disqualify him for the job.

He has also made more than a few accusations in that tirade that are ridiculous. How did the Clintons get dragged into this? Where is all the money that is funding the fight against him? Who is profiting from keeping this guy off the court? This is a bizarre way of defending yourself, and works to make him look a little unbalanced in my opinion.


This still ignores the fact that so many of the opinions he wrote during the Bush jr administration were kept under wraps. Why hide those, they are pertinent to the job he is attempting to get. If he is worthy of the job, it is up to him to show it. He has not in my opinion.
 
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